Flexible Jobs You Can Do Sitting at a Coffee Shop!

You can start earning from your laptop without sacrificing your daily routine.

This post breaks down practical laptop jobs you can try for a bit of extra cash and roles which can help you grow professionally.

You’ll see options that suit artists, tech nerds, creative entreprenuers, small business owners and those who prefer short tasks, so you can pick a path that feels both enjoyable and useful.

With just a laptop and a quiet corner in a coffee shop, you can turn your laptop into an income machine!

Each role lists typical tasks, pay expectations, and ways to start.

1. Portrait Illustration

Have you considered portrait illustration as a side gig? If you are a creative person, you can learn to become an illustrator who makes money illustrating portraits of people.

You can also create a family or couple portrait, or recreate any memory from customers that send you photos to illustrate. With a little computer skill, you can turn that drawing into a digital image and play around with the colours and text to customise. 

How much can you earn: $2,000-$4,000 based on your client base

What products to sell: Wedding/birthday invites, business cards, custom avatar, ebook covers for bloggers and online business owners. You can also do illustration tutorials online – like on YouTube – to help others grow their own business

Read: How this illustrator earns $4,000/month from home

2. Blogging

Talking about online business, did you know that you can make money blogging? This was news to me when I first began blogging a few years ago. But as a blogger you can earn anywhere between a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars each month, even if you are a busy student or a stay-at-home mom. 

How bloggers make money: Income from ads placed within your blog posts and commissions from affiliate links to products in your posts.

Small Blogs: When you begin a small blog you can apply to advertisement companies like Journey by Mediavine who pay quite well. For one of my small blogs with 10,000 visitors a months I get paid around $180-$200. Note: I have my ad settings turned down low, higher settings can make you more money.

Large Blogs: Once you reach over 25,000 pageviews a month you can apply to Raptive, or if you have over 50,000 sessions in 30 days, you can apply to Mediavine. Once you have been accepted here you can expect to make anywhere between $1,000-$5,000/month.

How do you share content for views: Pinterest has been the biggest source of traffic for bloggers, who are allowed to pin and share their content to a large audience on the platform. Mike shares how bloggers make $5,000 a month through his online training. 

If you are not a camera shy person you can also consider starting a Youtube channel instead of a blog. But I have noticed RPM’s which is the amount of money you earn per thousand views either for a Blog or YouTube channel are higher for bloggers in some niches. This means there is a greater earning potential for bloggers. 

3. Respondent

If you are not looking for an online business, but just need to make some extra cash for a few minutes of your time, you can check out Respondent IO.

With this company, you earn incentives by giving opinion or share your experience using certain products. You can expect to make an average of $95 per participation and this can be done either remotely, in-person or as a diary entry, choice is yours. As a rough estimate, tasks that range between 30-60 minutes can pay around $45-$100 while longer ones can pay up to $300. Once you sign up, you can browse available studies and choose the ones that suit you. 

4. User Interviews

This is another market research company that pays for your feedback. Market research work is great because unlike tradional survey sites, these companies pay well. With User Interviews you can expect to earn $45 an average for a project. Check out User Interviews here to join and participate.

5. Sell Printables

This is a popular and creative side hustle for those who are interested in creating designs. There is a huge demand for printables, especially on stores like Etsy, with people earning thousands of dollars in passive income. 

Why Printables: You don’t need to stock any items or shipping products. Once you create your desgin and upload it to your store you make money each time that design is sold. Apart from your laptop and a design platform like Canva, there is no other expenses to be made.

How to Begin: Julie and Cody have created this popular online training showing how you can start and scale this business to $3,000/month

6. Virtual Bookkeeper

If you are someone who is good with numbers, this is a great career option that will allow you to work from anywhere.

Bookkeeping is a job that includes organising financial transactions like recording money that comes in and goes out of the business, categorising the type of transactions and checking if statements are accurate. 

How to Begin: You do not need a degree to become a virtual bookkeeper, as this training offers the skillset to begin this online business.

Enrol in the first of their three classes for free to see if this is something that interests you – you can join the classes here.

Pay Scale: Students from this training are making between $5,000-$8,000/month.

7. Browsing on Swagbucks

The last two options on this list show you how you can make around $20-$40 browsing the internet and playing online games and watching videos. This is more of a fun side hustle in your free time. You can sign up for Swagbucks here to start earning. 

8. Games with Kashkick

Here is another way you can make some extra money playing games and completing daily surveys, using the Kashkick app.